Intel PCM Column Names Decoder Ring

When Intel Performance Counter Monitor (Intel PCM) is generating csv files as output, short names are used as column headers. This helps to keep the table width at a manageable size if the data is loaded in a spreadsheet program. However, it makes it rather hard to guess what exactly is hiding behind these abbreviations. Since I'm getting a lot of questions on how to interpret these column names, I've put together a decoder ring:

Field

Explanation

Example

The following metrics are available on all levels:

Date

Day-Month-Year

05-02-14

Time

Time of day

13:38:04

EXEC

Instructions per nominal CPU cycle, i.e. in respect to the CPU frequency ignoring turbo and power saving

0.182

IPC

Instructions per cycle. This measures how effectively you are using the core.

Please also note that PCM reports absolute values for the measured time interval. For example, if you use a time interval of 5 seconds, memory traffic or instructions retired are reported for the whole 5 seconds. Only if you are executing PCM with 1 sec time interval, you will get memory traffic in GB/s.